the democrat party have to go bold and trust the voters to pick the winner

We've got upwards of fifty people threatening to throw their hats in the ring. The press will publish stories about all of them, judge the reactions and favor those who get the most clicks/views/buys with more stories.

The action right now favors Bernie and Beto, Socialist vs Capitalist.

Berniebots(Socialists) are getting in some early blows to try and knock Beto out before the race starts. Beto may be progressive but he's a capitalist. All capitalists are the enemy, regardless of party.

Quote:

things have been getting incrementally worse for decades now on every front.

No, they aren't. The ACA has led us to a place where Medicare For All might become a reality. Gay rights have made remarkable strides. An increased federal minimum wage hike is on the horizon and is becoming a reality in many cities and states. Free college tuition and student loan reform has entered mainstream political discussion and is becoming a reality in many nations as they realize that an educated populace is the key to the future.

I see a democratic sweep coming in 2020. And I think, despite sustained attacks by the socialists, his is the name most likely to catch fire among liberal and progressive(capitalist) voters.

We seldom hear much about Bernie's many and glaring weaknesses were he to become president. He has no interest in race and gender issues. He has no interest in foreign policy or diplomacy. He has a deep understanding of a handful of domestic economic issues and beyond that he's pretty much an empty suit. We owe a lot to Bernie but I don't think we owe him the Presidency. Any more than we owed it to Clinton.

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Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...

My hope is that the field gets whittled quickly, and that the candidates spend as little effort as possible trying to destroy each other, rather than presenting positive ideas. Bernie-ites are already trying that with O'Rourke, and deceptively, too. That does not bode well for the actual party (which Senator Sanders is not a member of). It's ironic, yet unsurprising, that the most vociferous (and disingenuous) Bernie defenders aren't even Democrats, either. Why the Bernie Movement Must Crush Beto OíRourke (Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine)

And, Chait notes, Beto's critics don't represent most Democrats; they don't even represent typical Bernie voters. They are the most left of the left-wing supporters. The threat that they see O'Rourke poses is that a) he is too "mainstream", and b) he does a better job speaking to minorities and women, and might engage the Obama coalition.

Personally, I think Booker and Harris are the greater threat to Sanders voters. They just can't see that yet. What most Beenie voters don't notice is that Bernie won whites, but not women and minorities. O'Rourke can do both, which is why he is a threat.

Beto's critics don't represent most Democrats; they don't even represent typical Bernie voters. They are the most left of the left-wing

And they use the word "neoliberal" a lot. Because paleoliberals were somehow socialists like themselves....

Not that there's anything wrong with socialists. I want to live in a socialist world where everyone is housed, clothed, and fed. A world where the ambitious can grow rich and surround themselves with luxury, and where the artists and hippies can lay around and smoke weed and the regular people in between can get nice jobs to buy nice houses and cars.A world where war isn't necessary or desirable and everyone just gets along famously with each other because who cares what god you pray to or what sex you want to be or who you want to f*ck. A world where it doesn't matter what color your skin is or what side of what border you were born on.

You know...a socialist utopia.

From each, according to his abilities, and to each, according to his needs.

It's coming, but not in 2020. I'm already calling the race for Beto.

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Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...

Wages have stalled out for decades.We've killed hundreds of thousands of people.We imprison more people per capita than any other country.We pay more than all other developed countries for health care.Infant mortalility is high.U.S. Lifespans are declining. Gun deaths are increasingCost of housing as percentage of wages at historic high.Household debt is increasing.

etc, etc,

But we got gay marriages and transgender bathrooms. so I guess s'all good.The rest of the conversation getting injected with progressive ideas came primarily from Sanders campaign. Yes a socialist.

But your right Gregor. Your characterization of socialism has brought me back to reality. I was foolish to think things are getting bad. That neoliberalism has proven to be a fraud and yet another Ivy League grift for white collar criminals to explain their grift as 'the only way'.

Things are indeed better. Just hop in the car and drive in any direction and the evidence is all around for me to see.

Beto is the the favorite. He has the young 'executive model' look about him.The phoney framing that keeps oozing into the mainstream corporate media of a war getting waged by Sanders supporters is absurd but not unexpected. I remember all the misogynistic 'Bernie Bro' Sh!t talk coming from various Clinton friendly media. Same play. Jonathan Chait is one of those morons, like Bill Crystall, that continues to be wrong on most subjects that these corporate funded co called public intellectuals are famous for. His gulf war support, reasoning and defense of his reasoning is a constant theme writing and is worth anyone's time to read before taking his opinion or political characterization seriously. His other theme is pearl clutching over his understanding of Marx. Spoiler alert: It's bad.

When I rail about the stupidity of the freaks and morons involved in flying the plane into the mountain in 2016 and yet somehow crawl out of the smoking crater offering more stupid analysis and somehow keep their high salaried jobs, Jonathan Chait is the type I have in mind. His position on the Gulf War disqualifies him as a serious intellectual. That's not an attack of a Sanders supporter but a critique of Chiat. See the difference? No?

He's also a scab at the New Yorker but that might not matter much for most here.

But here we have it. Beto is unquestionably good. Don't ask to see his voting record and worse yet, express an opinion on it. To do so makes you a dupe of the Marxist Utopian peddling pretender Sanders, a fanatic or both.

The Dem neoliberal's have their man. It's looking like 2016 all over again. A neoliberal in a progressive wrapper against a New Deal democrat in a Democratic Socialist wrapper.

An interesting article of this relentless media trolling of Sanders supporters :

"Thereís nothing that our party needs less than a relitigation of 2016. But itís important to say that Sanders was a protest candidate: a septuagenarian left-winger from a small state, he was the kind of candidate who usually gets 5%. Instead, he got 42%.

Itís worth asking why he did so well, without getting into the personal terms that so often have animated this question. And if I could offer a single reason, it is that a huge part of the party, nearly half, did not like being told whom to vote forÖ ."

You could do worse than Warren. She won't be a darling of the big money boys on Wall St. Win or lose, I'd welcome having her voice in the debates and the issues she's sure to raise. Might even say the "P" word.

Sadly, she fails in charisma and oratorical skills. I just don't foresee her generating a lot of excitement among voters. She's a bean counter and a regulator, great at what she does but do I want her running the country...?Better than Trump by far so there's that.

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Good coffee, good weed, and time on my hands...

Hafta agree with you there Gregor. She's not a real live wire or has any Clash references but I'm glad she'll lend a voice to sanders and, more importantly, push ideas instead if product or treat the primary like a brand roll out. She's no friend of Big Mo so that's a good thing and should make her arguments more genuine. Holy moley, imagine! The democrats having big ideas for big problems. It would be a nice change from selling Republican with Zero Calories.